Tag Archives: surrealism

this painting is by Vladimir Kush. This picture is divided quite naturally into three parts representing three elements: Heaven, Sea, and Subterranean World. Here the whole front of the picture is taken up by the image of the subterranean world, where a giant egg-shaped rock fragment hangs between sharp jags of the cliffs. In the background of the picture we see a cloud in the shape of a bird flying away. This creates connection between the front and the background giving rise to associations with Polynesian myths of the Creation of the Earth from the Egg laid into the Ocean by the giant bird. Sails in the sea and hovering birds are symbols of wind, breath, and human soul. Being arranged in the nearly vertical direction, they produce the feeling of the cosmic infinity of the world around. In the Upanishads, a great Indian philosophical work preoccupied mainly with matters like the nature of the Universe, two birds perch on a branch of the Cosmic Tree; one of them takes its food, while the other is guarding it.

Two conical bundles are defined by the illumination of the Moon. This is the viewpoint of an observer, high above the Earth in the Cosmos. A romantic mood is created by the artist conveyed by the night voyage of the sailboat around the globe.

The National Library in Vienna contains a miniature edition of the Holy Bible where God, the Lord of Sabbath, is depicted as the Architect who draws the boundaries of the future Earth in cosmic space by means of a pair of compasses. This served as the basis for the paintings, “Newton” and “The Hand of the Lord,” by William Blake, an English mystic, poet, and artist. In these pieces, Blake illustrates the creation of our world by the Lord-Geometrician. In this painting the artist shows us the boundaries of the Earth’s night.

Kush was born in Russia, in a small one-story wooden house on the northern edge of Moscow, near the forest-park, Sokolniki

At the age of seven, concurrent with general education, Vladimir began to attend art school until late evening where he became acquainted with the works of great artists of the Renaissance, famous Impressionists, and Modern artists.

Vladimir Kush entered the Moscow Higher Art and Craft School at age 17, but a year later he was conscripted. After six months of military training the unit commander thought it more appropriate to employ him exclusively for peaceful purposes, namely, painting propagandistic posters.

In the year 1987, Vladimir began to take part in exhibitions organized by the Union of Artists. At a show in Coburg, Germany in 1990, nearly all his displayed paintings sold and after closing the exhibition, he parted ways with the two other Russian artists that had accompanied him. He flew to Los Angeles where 20 of his works were exhibited and began his “American Odyssey.”

In Los Angeles, Kush worked in a small, rented home garage, but was unable to find a place to display his paintings. He earned money by drawing portraits on the Santa Monica pier and later moved to Hawaii.

A dealer from France noticed the originality of the work and organized an exhibition in Hong Kong in 1993 at the Schoeni Art Gallery. Success surpassed all expectations. Kush then published his first album in Moscow and his work on a huge panel in the Mandarin Hotel was featured on television.

In 1993, Kush painted several panels featuring the prehistoric whales that now decorate the Whale Museum on Kaanapali Beach in Maui. In 1995, a new exhibition in Hong Kong at the Mandarin Fine Art Gallery brought more success. In 2001 Kush opened his first gallery, Kush Fine Art in Lahaina, Hawaii. In addition, he now has locations in New York, Las Vegas and Laguna Beach, California where admirers visit from all corners of the earth.

In common parlance, “Psychedelic Painting Art” refers above all to the art scene of the counterculture in the 1960s. Visual art was a counterpart to the era’s psychedelic rock music and the free-spirited subculture.